Heart of the Realm: Character Exercises
by Eu Tyto Alba
Summary: Little shorts I scribbled as practice for my upcoming 'Heart of the Realm' fic. Subjects therein vary, but the context will always be that of HotR, which is going to be an Ansem biography that pretends KH1's sequels never exited.
1. Ansem's Dreams

**Heart of the Realm: Ansem's Dreams**

"This seems to be a pattern," the boy observed. "The only answers I ever need to look up are ones that are nowhere to be found. So much for others having walked the path of life before me! It's useless," he said, slamming the book and chucking it over his shoulder. He put his face in his hands, elbows on his desk, and ruffled his own, dark hair. After a moment, dark eyes looked up, unseeing, rather peering into the realm of thought, into the realm of his dreams...

In the first dream, he was on a ship that was only powered by oarsmen. Him and his father were trying to escape from a pursuing army, for they had just escaped imprisonment for some unknown crime. The oarsmen were no match for the superior forces driving the boats behind them, however, so his father ordered that all of the crew's hammocks be made into makeshift sails. While Ansem was helping him do this, however, he noticed a door ajar in one of the hammock rooms. The door intrigued him because he could not recall ever seeing it before, and he thought, though he wasn't quite sure, that whatever room it must lead to couldn't physically exist on the ship. (He was spatially aware like that.) In fact, there was indeed a window on the same wall through which one could see the ocean. Yet the door was swung inward, bearing entrance to a room lost somewhere in the darkness. "Is it a closet?" Ansem asked himself. He walked by it several times as he collected the hammocks, but did not go in-----something about it just didn't seem natural, almost as if there _was no_ room behind that darkness.

"Dreams are full of errors, are they not?" the youth pondered out loud. "I think," he began slowly, "that maybe, I had not completed the dream. Maybe these doors and corridors that seem to lead off into areas of lightlessness are actual dead-ends where my unconscious imagination had yet to fill-in-the-blanks."

The trouble was, in fact, that he had seen this many times in his dreams over the past year, and could not put his finger on what changed. Was he simply becoming more aware, as is natural during adolescence ------or rather beginning to loose his marbles?

"...Nah," he said, and brushed away that thought. And once again turned his reflections unto memory.

In a more recent dream, Ansem could remember very little except for that he was in a church, and wearing roller-blades. Or was it a skateboard? The dream was so foggy in his memory he couldn't quite remember now. The building was deserted, though he never saw inside the chapel; he skated though the back rooms and out into a courtyard. It was very large, but he covered ground very quickly. This was fun! He even skated down a flight of stairs; this lead him to the foot of a bell tower. Seeing an opportunity for adventure, he went inside and was confronted only with two more staircases. One lead up, and the other, down. Obviously, the former lead up to the bells. But why on earth would a bell tower need a basement? Ansem found himself much more curious about the later, and decided to commence his adventure, there. He descended the sectioned flights that made up the whole-----one-------two------three... with the light from above growing ever dimmer, until eventually the total, impenetrable blackness awaiting below, showing no promising signs of there being anything at all down there, started to give him the creeps. This darkness seemed to be "thicker" than normal darkness, as if "condensed" somehow. (It was exactly like the darkness beyond the door in his ship dream.) He continued a little further, but it wasn't long after that that he turned around and abandoned his quest.

"Aagh. It was only a dream. I should have kept going," young Ansem thought out loud, now, awake, very frustrated with himself. "It's not like anything would've _really_ happened to me."

The memories of several other similar dreams all presented themselves to him at once. He slumped onto his desk, half hiding his face behind folded arms as he ridiculed himself, mentally, for his own lack of nerve. "To think oneself brave to the core, only to be afraid of the dark in your dreams--------in the playground of the subconscious, are we not our true selves?" He groaned, and buried his face completely into his elbows, squirming under the torment of private humiliation.

In another dream, Ansem found himself studying for an exam in conjuring nymphs. Though he excelled in Theory, his application skills were not to his satisfaction. He scribbled the runes like he knew he should, and exactly stated the specified incantations, but for some reason or another, his spells always "shorted out" to no effect. This greatly irked him, because he _knew_ that he was doing everything correctly, and yet... It just wasn't logical. It wasn't mathematical. "It's......_magical_," he realized. "Maybe if I mess up on purpose," Ansem wondered, amused by the notion but harried enough by failure that he was willing to try it. "Just as an experiment," he told himself. He opened his textbook and began to chant, changing the words. "Fat, aloof Santa Clause xerox!" (Originally: Fahtalof satumkra zer'ros.) The book in his hands began to glow faintly; His spell was working!

Or, so it seemed at first; He waited, but no benign spirits appeared. He swore, and decided to call it an evening. But as he put his things away and straitened the furniture, Ansem couldn't help but feel he was being watched. A prickle ran up his spine, and he turned around to see that the window was open. Night had already fallen, it seemed. But as he drew nearer so as to close it, the feeling got worse. The sky appeared pitch black, but with each step expecting a glowing horizon to appear, and being disappointed, fear began to nag at him. Three feet from the sill, he halted. It was pretty plain that there were no city lights below, but from where he stood now, he might still be able to convince himself otherwise. Beyond this window, the darkness appeared as a solid wall. He couldn't even approach it.

.

* * *

**AN:** _Highly_ obscure tribute to Billy Zane, did you catch it? The magic incantation here was swiped from an episode of Batman TAS, in which Zane voices a Medieval demon. I invented the spelling. :\

Also, the first "dream" was an allusion to the legend of Icarus, since I heard there was an alternate version in which it was not _wings_ Icarus' father invented, but the first boat sails, where Icarus simply fell overboard and drowned. The second "dream" was one that I really had, but I changed several details to make it coherent, because it wasn't. I made the third one up completely.

The title of this short is an allusion to the book called "Einstein's Dreams", but I didn't come up with that until _after_ I wrote it.


	2. Heirloom Talents

**Heart of the Realm: Heirloom Talents  
**

"Come, now. You've been in there for hours. What are you up to?" the voice of a lady called through the door. He knew that voice, warm, and penetrating, like a lock-picker's light. And yet he did not answer right away. The boy was deep in his work, hands tied, and holding a flashlight in his mouth. Had he not been hanging inverted from the contraption, he would have surely put something down.

The door opened a crack, but then was quickly thrown up against the adjoining wall, revealing its occupant, the Queen. She was dressed in a casual, yet due-ly elegant, floor-length summer gown. Her long, wavy black hair was done up on one side with barrettes. She folded her arms and leant against the door frame, and laughed.

The little, wannabe-engineer, frozen mid-tweak, and upside-down, turned only his head to look at her.

_Busted._

He smiled at her with the flashlight still in his teeth, and said, rather muffled, "Hi Mom."

The dark-haired woman shook her head slowly and raised one hand to her brow. "You look ridiculous," she said.

Indeed, with the boy's hair on-end due to gravity, his shirt coming untucked and attempting to fall 'up', his face red, and the flashlight in his mouth-----never mind the bizarre, trailer-sized configuration he was hanging from-----there was little else to be said. The boy placed the tools he was working with under his arm thus freeing his hand to regrip the flashlight, which he wiped dry on his pant leg before pulling himself upright on the contraption, and leaping to the ground. Natural athletic ability was evident.

"Hi Mom," he said again. "I was just, aah..."

"Just promise me you wont fall on your head," the woman in the doorway interjected.

"I wont," her son insisted, rolling his eyes. He did not expect her to care what he was even working on.

However, she had left the door frame and was now walking towards him, past him, and around the invention with her arms still folded. "I give up," she said at last, gazing up at it. "What is it?"

A whimsical, almost misty sort of daylight was pouring in from the doors of a balcony that were propped open across the room from them. It was a very large room, with blue stone tiles appearing to surface here and there between islands of richly embroidered area rugs, mostly of a darker blue with varying shades of gold and yellow in their designs. In spite of these details, however, this particular room boasted a distinct lack of furniture. Nothing but a humble wooden worktable, a few wall-mounted candles for light in the afterhours, and a lightly padded workstool. All the rest had been laboriously pushed or carried outside onto the balcony, where it all now sat in a confused jumble.

Against the rich tones of the indoors, however, there stood, in strange contrast, a wonder of dark and dingy ironwork made of parts that looked like they had been salvaged from a sunken steamboat. It much resembled an oversized canary cage, except for an air about it which seemed to suggest, rather, occupants like carnivorous dinosaurs. From its top-center, where the iron bars converged like a spider's legs to its body, there hung a large bundle of metallic chips and wires about the size and shape of a haphazard beehive. This is the part which Ansem had been working on when his mother walked in.

The prince himself was tall despite his age; He was only 13, but already almost a head taller than she. His wispy black hair, after he had straitened himself out, was tucked behind his ears as best he could get it to stay, but otherwise long bangs hung in his eyes. He'd fix it up better later, when he was done working. His eyes were a muddy blue, almost gray.

The boy was suddenly delighted. Though his parents had claimed to know of his talent for many years, for the most part they had left him alone in the matter. And that's how he thought he preferred it. He was happy by himself, immersed in his projects. However, now, to be questioned about something other than his safety--------his little heart just overflowed with pride.

"It's one of those elevators like they have down at the docks," he burst out, with a grin. "My friend's dad gave us a ride on one the other day, and, well, I found a book on them in Dad's library. He said I could have it."

His mother shot him a sideways look of surprise. _And so you __built__ one?_ it seemed to say. However, she then asked, "What are you going to do with it when you're done?"

"Well, I was thinking of giving it to my friend's dad, if it works okay," the boy shrugged, clearly more interested in the challenge than its utility.

"Ah," was the reply, and she knelt down to examine the device up close. She ran her fingers over the welds attaching the cage's black bars to their base. "Nice work, Ansem. How long did all of this take you?"

"Just a couple of days, once I found all the stuff."

"And no one helped you?"

"Well, Hans helped, a little bit. But I think he just wanted to make sure I didn't light the rug on fire, or shoot my eye out," the boy laughed as he placed the flashlight, a small pack of screwdrivers, and a bag of screws upon the worktable beside of what appeared to be a crystal-powered welding gun.

There was also a large, beautiful chest upon the table in which these things were kept when not in use. Blue, with gold designs, and actually treasure-chest shaped, with a large keyhole on top for an oversized skeleton key; It was the toolkit of a onetime jewelrymaker, a lifetime ago.

But Ansem didn't know that.

.

* * *

**AN:** Zoe, Ansem's mother, is an original character of mine. Just because I don't feel like messing with this piece any further, I'll just clarify here and now that the point I was trying to convey is that Ansem inherited his mechanical genius from his mom, who I say was formerly a jeweler running an Item Shop before she met his dad. (But I don't want to spoil _too_ much of my story for yeh!)

Oh yeah... And Hans, Ansem's older brother, is a completely original character of mine, too.


	3. Last Descent

**Hear of the Realm: Last Descent**

It was the end of the day, the end of a _long_ day. A tall, dark-skinned man with long, flowing white hair sat in his pajamas upon the roof of his Hollow Bastion home, a castle with spires that overlooked the whole of his world. All of which belonged solemnly to him, a king with no surviving family, and no Queen with whom to have heirs.

But as the sun sank lower in the sky, so too did his thoughts sink into morbid reflection upon the day's events. He had done the unthinkable but at what cost he could not yet discern. It was supposed to be absolutely his last experiment, however the end result of it proved truly unique. Ansem would not be sitting here now, lucid minded, and still in human form, if it hadn't. He was-----is!-----the irregularity. The result could not be explained inspite of all his knowledge of the Heartless.

None the less, Ansem recounted over and over again what he had seen happen in the past when the Heartless were fed, and over and over again, compared these beastly recollections to the thing he had done only hours ago.

The light of the evening dimmed as the spidery shadows of Western mountains began to creep their way over the capitol city, and the sky shone a silvery lemon color. Ansem reclined, clinging to a decorative, metal spike with one arm and dangling both his feet over the edge. A chilled gust of wind swept over him, also releasing a flock of about six crows from the gutters of the castle's rooftops into the sunset. Because of the contrasting light, the crude black silhouettes reminded him of the heartless. And, just then, the sting of the wind felt like the Darkness itself.

"How.....refreshing." The man closed his eyes, feeling again the sharp talons of the little critters crawling all over him, puncturing his skin. And though he had deliberately put himself in that position, and was resolute to the end, a sudden, surprise pang of terror had reared up inside him momentarily. But that was only the full reality of what he was doing sinking in, a feeling which could be easily dealt with, he knew, by simply ignoring it. The Heartless engulfed him like an abandoned ham sandwich at a picnic. Little did they seem to care who was their creator and benefactor. Once they understood he was there to surrender, that was it. They tore through his skin. They pulled out his heart. And the lights went out.

The next thing Ansem knew, he was waking up on the ground, soaked for being in a large puddle of water, and chilled through all the way to the marrow of his bones. Still in the dungeons beneath the castle------where the Heartless were kept-------had he blacked out? Ansem examined his hands, and then ran one through his hair, feeling for sprouted antennae. The Heartless were still crawling all over him, stepping on his back as if they barely noticed or cared that he was there. He shoved them off and sat up. His arms were numb all the way up to his elbows from the cold, so he rubbed his hands together and blew into them to strangely little effect. And then at last, pulled himself back to his feet. He surveyed the Heartless; several approached and momentarily sniffed at his boots with their feelers, before heading away to continue their search for edibles elsewhere.

Thus was the start of Ansem's new trouble. Clearly he had lost his heart, but unlike any previous subject in the course of his experiments, he alone did not take the form of one of these creatures.

.

* * *

**AN:** This was just an exercise, not actually what I have in mind for how this scene will go down in Heart of the Realm. I has a waaay better idea now. This version is old. (And cliche, in my opinion.) :|


	4. Sleepless

**Heart of the Realm: Sleepless**

I have been awake for three days unsleeping and without knowing why. My duties have all been met, and I am at a point now that is in between projects, before I have settled my sights upon any new one in particular. What is it then that is keeping me awake, or am I simply depriving myself out of habit? So rigorous are my studies! And even then when my assignments are complete, it is as though I cannot stop myself. My mind races, I read on, take further notes than is necessary, my handwriting fast and legible to none but myself, my heart beats only so that I can keep absorbing knowledge, I hold my breath at the turn of each page. I stay up too late, then go to bed and lay awake in awe of what I have learned, breathless and fervently pondering new applications for everything I have come to know. I do not feel tired, but for various dull sensations that specific parts of my body are wearing down. This unsettles me, because the first thing to hurt is always my head, and there're moments sometimes that I'm not sure I haven't just had a minor stroke. What does a stroke feel like, anyway?

Now, however, I am in limbo. Everything is still. I have not yet selected and begun a new journey for which I will sacrifice myself. In other words, this is my time to relax. (And, especially, to concentrate on regaining my health!) The only question I'm allowing myself to ponder is: Why haven't I done so, while precious time is dwindling?

.

* * *

**AN:** I didn't even mention his name, but you know who this is. :)


	5. Birth of a Precocious Prince

**AN:** This is the stub which held the place of Chapter 1 of HotR for so very, very long. I don't even remember how long ago I wrote it. A year and a half ago, at least. I didn't delete it because my one and only comment on HotR highly praised it. Thankee very kindly, sir. Your encouragement was like a little ray of hope that told me not to be so hard on myself. I still practiced all darn year for this project, but I had more faith that my writing appeared better to others than it did to myself, which counts for a lot. :D

* * *

**Birth of a Precocious Prince**

There's a baby's crib in the farthest corner from the window, and a mother's rocking chair bedraped with knitted cotton blanket close beside it. It rocks gently in the wind by itself. The crib is occupied by shadow and finest linen, where it sits quietly beneath a dangling mobile consisting of shapes of various things that are meant to interest a baby--shapes found in nature. But the mobile's representation was a mockery of their beauty; One needed only to follow the cold draft to the open window, and outside into the bright night sky to understand this fully. The stuffed flannel figures were dead compared to their life counterparts.

Although, what young babe would know the difference who's crib was placed so far from the window, and who could thus not gaze up observing these things first-hand as he be laid down to sleep?

As the extremely young do require much attention to survive, in a baby's sleep were the only hours one-such had to himself, to seek peace in absolute comfort and safety, without worries, and without wants... And that is why, or so believed, that parents, especially mothers, can find peace for themselves in watching their children sleep; freedom from the pressures of the world, freedom from all pain such as injury and illness... A temporary release from suffering, like Heaven in part, obtained periodically through something like partial death.

But, unlike full death, a person is allowed to wake up in the morning, after all the dark hours have passed, and rise to meet the daily demands of a mortal world.

Or, perhaps that is really what happens when an infant is born--an awakening into this nightmare of stressful routine and inherent duty, confinement in a body only sleep can free a soul from.

We'll find out wont we. Tonight. On the other side of that door in the nursery bedecked in exquisite wood carvings of armored horsemen, just audible through the keyhole of its superbly polished copper doorknob what is happening across the hall...

"Your second son, Your Majesty."

"Ansem."

* * *


	6. Alternate Final Rest Draft

**Heart of the Realm: Alt. "Final Rest" Draft****  
**

The bedtime preparations were routine. The silence only filled her thoughts with other things, gave her mind room to wander, and sadly, also, to grieve. No conversation. No commotion in the room other than her own. There was stillness, purest, undisturbed stillness, except for a little flickering flame that carelessly turned the surrounding furniture into monsters on the wall; they twitched with their impatience... But, the woman in the mirror saw neither this nor actually the reflection of herself, but gazed deep into the distance, into the reflection of the room behind her, wanting to believe that she could see them, her lost loved ones, still standing at her sides. She could not picture herself these days without seeing them as well, the faces of the fallen; had they been _that_ close-knit? She found it strangely hard to recall.

Gently, so as not to make a sound, she set down her brush, and tied her long hair up, loosely. She peered in the mirror one last time, for a long, last time. What to do with yourself when you would rather waste away dwelling on the past? And when not even all was lost! A grown son still remained to her, whom in fact was now to be her highest hope for a new and bright tomorrow. Grown though he was, it was still her duty as his mother to be strong for him; for surely, he has lost at _least_ as much as she. She worried about him; He was the type to bottle everything in... And she was winding herself up into a nervous fit before bed. She needed to clear her head; It would do her no good to go without sleep, what with her resolve to 'be strong'.

At long last she arose from her seat, and girlishly blew a kiss to the phantoms she'd imagined in the mirror. Her heart ached; she missed them so dearly, so deeply. But she knew that there would never be a remedy for this kind of pain. Not in this life, anyway.

She carried her candle to the nightstand beside her bed, and removed from her finger a small silver token: the ring which, by olden legend, signed a mutual wish to meet one's spouse in the afterlife.

The legend said that, a long, long time ago, people used to live forever. But men seeking power grew discontent, and sought mans of transcendence. Thus, they discovered Sleep. From Sleep, people often returned with strange and wondrous stories to tell. These stories, full of meaning, helped the people of the world to understand their lives. However, Sleep was imperfect, a few said; it was shallow, it was impermanent. Thus Death was discovered. By the time that the people of the world got wise to them, however, these men were well beyond their reach. It was thus that the people of the world learned of Separation. But Death was indiscriminate, and even loved ones had to part. Life became a cycle, which continues even to this day. But ever since then, the people of the world have sought ways to transcend it... One was called the Second (or Silver) Promise, which were rings worn by a husband and wife who wished to meet each other as friends in the afterlife.

It was all but forgotten these days, however. Sealed away in dusty old lore books on collectors' shelves, or read aloud in sweetened versions to nursery-school children. Luck would have it, though, that her husband had been one such book collector. A history buff, actually... When his primary physician informed her that he was unlikely to last the night, she had gone cold and speechless. But he, it seemed, though impenetrably sad, was the least surprised. From his sickbed, he pulled out the rings, custom-made, and virtually proposed to her all over again.

The woman's hand trembled violently as she fingered the silver piece. It had quarts embedded in its design. A curiosity, considering the extremely fine craftsmanship... The metal shivered in the candlelight; she caught a glimpse of herself in it, like a tiny, warped mirror.

_So incomplete_.

But before the tears could fall, she gathered herself, and tucked the little ring under the lid of an ivory jewelry box on her nightstand. She cupped her hand around the back of her candle and blew it out. The room went completely dark, except for a sliver of sky visible through a crack in the shutters of the nearest window. Her eyes adjusted more as she crawled into bed; there were a lot of stars out tonight, but they looked......fragile. As if ready to tumble out of the sky.

.

* * *

**AN:** Found this in a forgotten post of my LJ. At the time I _hated_ it, but reading it with fresh eyes, I find it's not _nearly_ as incoherent as I thought it was. I especially like the closing, which I had already vowed to keep tweaking with in my new draft, which currently holds the honorable position of HotR's official Chapter 1. Compare-and-Contrast type critiques between the two versions would be appreciated, if you're up for it. :)


End file.
